]]>In Albany, Oregon this weekend at the Mother Earth News Fair, be sure to check out “Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods from dirt to plate” with John Kallas – Wild Food Adventures.

MOTHER EARTH NEWS Stage | Saturday, 5:30-7:00 PM
In this beautiful, educational and fun slide presentation, John Kallas shows how to identify, harvest and prepare nutritious, delicious and abundant wild plants found within walking distance of your kitchen. He also shows you features that make for effective learning in any wild food book. This presentation is a sampling from Kallas’ book, Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods From Dirt to Plate. (A question-and-answer period and book signing follows.) Kallas makes wild foods understandable and usable by the general public, including gardeners, chefs, dieters, home cooks and nutrition-minded consumers. He makes it fun and easy to learn about foods you may have passed by all your life, and he shares the knowledge and confidence to finally begin eating and enjoying them. The plants covered are easy to identify and abundantly found throughout North America, Europe and the Mediterranean. These healthy wild foods are the core of the true Mediterranean diet. Find out how easy it is to incorporate these foods into everyday modern life, whether you’re a novice or an advanced forager.

Speaker BioJohn Kallas is one of the foremost authorities on edible wild plants of North America. He is the author of one of the top-selling wild food books of all time, Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods From Dirt to Plate, an easy-to-use, color photograph-packed manual showcasing foods that anyone can find within walking distance of their kitchens. Kallas is a trained botanist, nature photographer, writer, researcher, teacher and speaker. Over the years he’s written articles for magazines ranging from Fine Cooking to Primitive Technology. He runs the Wild Food Adventures Outdoor School based in Oregon. For more information visit www.WildFoodAdventures.com.

]]>DannyNewman, a visiting mycologist from California will be giving a special presentation to CMS on Wednesday May 27th.

Danny Newman is an independent neo-tropical mycologist and photographer interested in cataloging biodiversity, and the systematics of entomopathogenic fungi. He’s the librarian for the Mycological Society of San Francisco, the founder of the Sociedad Micológica de Bolivia, and is a parataxonomist with Dr. Dennis Desjardin’s lab and the Harry D. Thiers Herbarium at San Francisco State University.

Sedecula pulvinata is a rare truffle that occurs in dry pine forests. It has somehow managed to escape the attention of molecular biologists – as well as most everyone else… the latest research is from 1947.

We don’t know what family it’s in (or even what order!), nor its role in the ecosystem. Dr. Trappe led a crack team to undo these injustices, and he will share their breathtaking results.

Meet at 7:00 pm, room 115, Science Building (Building 16) at Lane Community College in Eugene. There will also be a mushroom show and tell identification session prior to the speaker. Bring what’s in your basket, edible or not, and learn from the experienced members of our community. The talk is free and open to the public.

The Annual Membership Meeting has been scheduled this year in conjunction with the May Morel Stuffing Party & Grill Out on Sunday, May 3, 2015 beginning at 4:00 pm, at a member’s home. Bring a stuffing for the mushrooms or a dish featuring or complementing spring mushrooms. We will have piping bags and a table set up with fresh morels for grilling.

The purpose of the meeting is three-fold. First, we will elect a new Board. Second, we recruit members to help make the events we put on; forays, the mushroom display at the Mt. Pisgah Mushroom Festival, educational programming, culinary events, and monthly public meetings. Last, the spring morel potluck is a great event you do not want to miss.

Invitations and a link to vote for the new board will be sent to members on Wednesday, April 8, 2015.

]]>“In this talk, I will illustrate the spectacular and diverse world of Ascomycete fungi in the west. You will learn about edibles from morels to truffles, fungal habitats and fungal lifestyles. I describe what Ascomycetes are. You will learn about unusual fungi, some with medicinal applications, some with industrial uses, some that cause plant diseases, some that cure plant diseases, and some that control insects.

I describe how I came to write the book Ascomycete Fungi of North America with coauthors Alan and Arleen Bessette, the first color –illustrated book to cover North American Ascomycetes. Ascomycete Fungi of North America has just been nominated for the PROSE award for the best 2014 book in the single volume reference/science category.” – Dr. M. Beug

Dr Michael Beug with Morels and Boletes

Meet at 7:00 pm, room 115, Science Building (Building 16) at Lane Community College in Eugene. There will also be a mushroom show and tell identification session prior to the speaker. Bring what’s in your basket, edible or not, and learn from the experienced members of our community. The talk is free and open to the public.

]]>Join the Cascade Mycological Society for a weekend morel and spring bolete foray in Bend on Saturday, June 6 and Sunday, June 7. You will need a current mushroom picking permit for personal use. They are free from the forest service.

We’ve reserved a block of rooms at Cultus Lake Resort which features 23 rustic cabins, on or near the lake. For reservations, call the lodge at 541-408-1560 or email them at reservations@cultuslakeresort.com. They are closed for the season so please allow a week or so for your confirmation. Another recommended overnight location is nearby Cultus Lake Campground. 55 non-reservable tent camping sites are available.

We will be departing for the foray from Cultus Lake Resort. You will receive detailed meetup information from the Foray Host after completing your registration. This foray is capped at 20 people per day.

Attention Mycological Societies of Northern California and Oregon,

The Humboldt State University Mycology Club would like to invite you to our Spring Mushroom Fair on Saturday April 4th, 2015 from 12:00-5:00pm in the Kate Buchannan Room on HSU campus. Please pass this info along to your members in case any of them wants to make the journey to Humboldt County for this awesome student-run fair. This is a free, one-day event, and will be packed with mycological talks, delicious fungal foods, mushroom art, tables devoted to virtually every fungal topic, and all the general festivity you’d expect at any mushroom fair! See the flyer for more details.

Members of the HSU Mycology Club and the Humboldt Bay Mycological Society will be frantically foraying during the days leading up to the fair, which any of you are welcome to join in on. All specimens need to be delivered to the HSU Mycology Lab in Science B by a reasonable hour on Friday evening for identification.

Please feel free to contact us if you are coming and wish to participate in any way, or if you would like to be set up with accommodation during your stay. May we fortify our hyphal network of myco-enthusiasts across our bioregion!

]]>Adventure into the discoveries, epiphanies, and profound accidents which developed the intimate dance with fungi we call mushroom cultivation.

A span of almost 2,000 years and a brilliantly inventive past century have brought mushroom growing into a vital art of transforming wastes into nutrient rich foods, potent medicines, and consciousness expanding, therapeutic allies, with major implications on ecological resilience.

Ja will bring a variety of cultivated fungi growing at different stages and methods to accompany the presentation. The talk is free and open to the public.

Meet at 7:00 pm, room 115, Science Building (Building 16) at Lane Community College in Eugene. Gregory J. Koester with the Eugene District Bureau of Land Management will be issuing free personal use mushroom permits before the meeting. Stop by and get yours in time for the 2015 season.

There will also be a mushroom show and tell identification session prior to the speaker. Bring what’s in your basket, edible or not, and learn from the experienced members of our community.

Bio:

Ja Schindler is a researcher and instructor of mushroom cultivation and applied mycology as the founder and director of Fungi For The People, a Eugene based organization focused on food justice and environmental activism.

From their local research lab they are cultivating a diversity of projects to support citizen science and ecological restoration as well as producing cultivation supplies and mushroom products from their culture library of over 200 mushroom species. Since 2011 more than 2,500 people have attended their hands-on courses, both nationally and internationally.

Ja is currently authoring a book on mushroom cultivation due out December 2015 through Voyageur Press. To learn more about the work of Ja and Fungi For the People visit www.FungiForThePeople.org

Reservations are now being accepted for a Costa Rican Mushroom Foray to be lead by mycologist-author Lawrence Millman, who has documented fungi in places as diverse as Belize, Spitzbergen, Western Samoa, the Canadian Arctic, Honduras, Nantucket, and Costa Rica.

He is the author of Fascinating Fungi of New England, the only guidebook to New England fungi, as well as a book of mycological travel essays entitled Giant Polypores & Stoned Reindeer: Rambles in Kingdom Fungi. He lives in Cambridge, MA, USA. For more details, contact Sandy Schmidt in the US at 877-907-5360 or email schmidt@holbrooktravel.com.